The Lidl food chain, which focuses on discount sales of goods, is preparing a store in Prague’s Na Příkopě. It will use the premises of the historic building, the former headquarters of the Czechoslovak Commercial Bank. The food will be next to the Hamleys toy store. Lidl expects to open a new store in the middle of the year, he said in a press release today. Na Příkopě Street is around the 20th place in the ranking of the most expensive streets in the world by Cushman & Wakefield.
The grocery store will cover an area of 1,140 square meters. The construction works should affect the character of the building as little as possible, so there will be many atypical elements in the space. “Putting the store in these unique spaces is a challenge for us and we believe that the new store will simplify life, especially for residents of adjacent neighborhoods, but also for employees and visitors to the capital city, who do not have access to grocery stores in their immediate area,” said Lidla spokesman Tomáš Myler.
The building on the corner of Na Příkopě and Panská streets was renovated about ten years ago by Immofinanz and Lordship. It offers commercial and office space as well as an underground car park. In the past, a house called U tří lip stood on this site, where the writer Božena Němcová died in 1862. In the 1930s, it was replaced by a new building, which became the headquarters of the Czech Industrial Bank.
In 2019, Na Příkopě ranked 18th among the 68 most expensive streets in the world. The highest annual rent per square meter was CZK 72,190. In 2018, Na Příkopě Street ranked 19th, a year earlier 22nd.
“Food chains have been expanding very dynamically in recent years and it is understandable that with a higher density of their networks, they naturally consider specific places, such as Na Příkopě,” said Jan Janáček, head of the retail rental team at CBRE. According to him, the operation of the discount chain in this lucrative place should definitely not devalue the level of this street in any way. “This is a commercial space, if the operator was able to accept the conditions of one of the two most expensive streets in the Czech Republic, he is quite sure of the demand and potential that this place offers,” he added.
At the end of 2019, Lidl announced that due to the lack of land in the centers of large cities, it would focus on the reconstruction of existing buildings, where it would place new stores. The company currently operates 289 stores in the Czech Republic.
Source: CTK
